herxmar / rbot

A daily reminder bot for GroupMe

Reminder Bot / RBot

A daily reminder bot for GroupMe

Set a reminder for your whole group every day at a specific time.

Available Commands

View the full list of available commands. The following are the recommended variations:

Set up the bot

• Hey Reminder Bot, set reminder to X
• Hey Reminder Bot, activate

Configure the bot

• Hey Reminder Bot, set reminder time to X
• Hey Reminder Bot, set reminder day to (everyday, weekdays, weekends, M/T/W/Th/F/S)
• format for days can be M/Mo/Monday/Mondays etc
• Hey Reminder Bot, set reminder time to 6pm on weekdays

Activate the bot

• Hey Reminder Bot, activate the reminder

Preset the bot

• Hey Reminder Bot, use the running log preset

Test the bot

• Hey Reminder Bot, are you awake?
• Hey Reminder Bot, what is the status?

Getting Started

Confused? Check out these instructions.

1. Create Heroku App and configure Heroku Scheduler (if running free dyno)

• Heroku auto-kills your free dynos, so we need to add the Heroku Scheduler add-on
• Create a new job to run node cron-check.js every 10 minutes
• If you have a paid dyno that does not shut down, you can skip this step

2. Create a new GroupMe bot

• Enter Reminder Bot as the name
• Enter https://i.groupme.com/1000x1000.png.46ad37818d924567985aa2e7f138f791 as the avatar URL
• Enter the callback URL. This will be the /hook route of wherever you are deploying. For Heroku, it will be YOUR-APP-NAME.herokuapp.com/hook

3. Add BOT_ID, GROUP_ID, and DATABASE_URL to the environment variables

• Include your BOT_ID and GROUP_ID from the GroupMe API bots page
• Database must be a postgres database. If you are using free Heroku Postgres, the DATABASE_URL env var will already be configured.

4. Deploy and start chatting with Reminder Bot

• Say "Hey RBot, status" in the group that you added the bot to

Getting Started for people who have no clue what they are doing

1. Fork this repo

• Click fork

2. Create a free Heroku account and navigate to the dashboard

• Click new -> create new app and name it whatever you want (reminder-bot-6000). Remember this name.
• Click create app
• Scroll down to Connect to GitHub
• Select the repository you just forked (RBot)

3. Go to the GroupMe Bots page (you may need to create an account) and click Create Bot.

• Enter Reminder Bot as the Name
• Enter https://i.groupme.com/1000x1000.png.46ad37818d924567985aa2e7f138f791 as the Avatar URL
• If using Heroku, enter in the Callback URL as YOUR-APP-NAME.herokuapp.com/hook, replacing YOUR-APP-NAME with the name of the Heroku app you created in step 2 (reminder-bot-6000 for example).
• If you are hosting somewhere other than Heroku, set the callback URL to the /hook route of your hosted site. For example, if your hosted domain is https://my-cool-bot.example.com, the callback URL would be https://my-cool-bot.example.com/hook

4. In your Heroku app dashboard, navigate to Settings and click Reveal Config Vars

• Enter BOT_ID as KEY and your GroupMe Bot ID (found on the GroupMe Bots page) in the VALUE section. Then click "Add."
• Enter GROUP_ID with the Group Id associated with your bot

5. Add-on Heroku Postgres Heroku Scheduler

• For Heroku Postgres, go to the Resources tab of the app dashboard. Then, simply search for "Heroku Postgres" and select the Hobby Dev - Free option (no further configuration required)
• For Heroku Scheduler, go back to the Resources tab and search for Heroku Scheduler. Click Submit Order Form.
  • Note: Heroku may require you to add a credit card to verify your identity. The card added should not be charged for the purposes of this app, but it unfortunately is a required step if you are hosting with heroku.
• Click on the Heroku Scheduler in the list and it will open a new tab
• Click Add Job and select Every 10 minutes. This will wake up our bot to check if it is time to send a message every 10 minutes.
• In Run Command, type node cron-check.js and then press Save Job

6. Start chatting with the Reminder Bot

• In the group you added the bot to, try typing "Hey Reminder Bot, what is the status"
• Ask the reminder bot "Hey RBot, what are the available commands?" for more

How it works

• Each message sent in GroupMe is also sent to the bot
• The bot has code written to parse the message and tell if you are talking to him
• If you are talking to him, he will listen to you and update the database when you configure settings or enable the daily reminder
• Heroku automatically puts the server to sleep when you haven't interacted with the bot for 30 minutes
• Heroku will wake the bot up temporarily every 10 minutes to check if it is close to reminder time, and stay awake if it is close to time
• The bot sends the message to GroupMe at the scheduled time

License

This code is licensed under GNU General Public License v3.0